Forty-Seven
Day: 1568; Hour: 3
Coldness. A sharp impact, then a heavy weight to her gut. Hermione opens her eyes as the oxygen shoots out of her lungs, seeing a crooked mask over wide eyes staring out in front of them, before the Death Eater pushes themselves up and over her. A green light hits them in the back of the skull, and they fall before a figure darts through the smoke, stomping on her hand before disappearing.
Hermione yanks her hand to her chest with a squeak, her muscles stiff. She fists her hand, staring up at a dark sky and swirls of smoke. The screaming all around her is slow to filter in, and she's about to turn her head when someone trips over her again. There's only a dark cloak, no sign of either side, before they are rushing on.
They think she's dead.
Her breath tumbles into her lungs, and she clenches her other hand, finding the length of her wand still there. She had been running, and then...and then... She could have been dead. Would that have been it? Just...nothing at all. One moment wild with life, and the next another corpse on the ground, lost in the smoke.
Her inhale is sharper this time, and the mud is thick under her as she digs her elbow back. The fight. Draco, Harry, Ron, her friends, Sam, Toad, Lupin, all of them, out there, somewhere. And Death Eaters. Thousands of them, it feels like, and the heat of flames, the rotten stench, the tingling of magic along her skin, the metallic taste at the back of her tongue.
She rolls her head, looking to all sides of her, and then scrambles to her feet in slips, a grunt, and a hard grip to her wand.
Day: 1568; Hour: 4
"I don't get it," Toad wheezes, wiping his mouth, only to start gagging again when Sam vomits on his trainers.
Yellow and thin. Stomach bile, and Hermione feels the burning scratchiness in her chest and throat at the memory of it. Sam's hands are red and shaking, and he doesn't seem to notice how he smears it all over his face below the wrinkled lines of his brow, swiping at a wetness that feels more damaging. The tears might be for this moment or the force of his gagging, but they all pretend it's the latter or it was never there at all.
"Fu- Do Aurors go through any training anymore?" Draco sneers, jumping back from the spray.
Toad closes his eyes, breathes, and shakes his head. Shakes it like it could dislodge the memory from his head. The Auror on the ground, half his face blown away and his legs severed. But there is no getting rid of that - not without the use of strong magic.
"I don't get how there are only three Curses that are considered Unforgivable." Toad shakes his head again, wiping his face, trying to breathe.
"Just don't look at it." Harry's tone is low and even, before he grabs the back of her shirt and yanks her toward him.
Sam grabs Harry at the same time, pulling him back, and the force causes all three of them to stumble and trip to the ground. Draco dodges the spells aimed at them, Toad's shirt ripping as Draco pulls him faster, and the five of them send out their counter-attacks at the same time.
"I have to break." Draco doesn't flinch when she swings her wand toward him, casting over his shoulder.
"My neck?" Toad coughs, rubbing where the collar had dug into his skin.
"Where?" Hermione glances at the blond, his eyes trained on the sky.
"The graves." She catches the very annoyed look on Draco's face, and follows his eye line to the hesitant understanding on Harry's. "There's a tunnel there, Potter. I have orders."
"We'll go with you."
"I'll go alone."
"We'll bring you there," Harry corrects, and Draco scowls.
Day: 1568; Hour: 5
Hermione hits the ground with a grunt, heat searing across her side. There's wetness on her palm when she presses it there, rolling in the grass and to her feet to escape the jet of color that scorches the ground where she had been. She casts at the large form to her right before jerking her wand back, yanking their feet out from under them. Their spell sails into the air, but she's not quick enough to dodge the line of blue from the other Death Eater to the side of her.
She screams through her teeth, the pain moving through her shoulder, sparking at her temples, and flooding her chest. It fills her entire left arm until the muscles feel like it's impossible to move them, and she casts a blocking spell in a gasp that sounds too close to a sob. Two spells hit off her shield, shoving her feet back, and her right arm wobbles as she tries to breathe through the pain. She doesn't dare look at her shoulder, blood flowing down her skin.
Her body heaves forward as green erupts from the end of her wand, and she drops to her knees as one of the Death Eaters fall, another spell flying over her head. She feels as if half the energy she had left was wrapped around the curse she sent out, and there's an odd draining sensation traveling from her shoulders and down her spine.
The Death Eater is injured, hunched over with one arm clutching their stomach, and their wand is trembling in the air. Hermione blocks, counters, blocks, grinding her teeth together as she stumbles to her feet. Another Killing Curse might just take all that's left within her, but she doesn't have a choice – any second now there will be more Death Eaters while she is alone, and they will undo a Stunning or Binding spell, and they will kill her.
"Avada Kedavra!" she yells, as force hits her in her thighs, throwing her back through the air.
She slams against something unmoving with a hugh and crack, and she bites down so hard to keep herself from yelling out at the pain that blood fills her mouth. There's a deep pressure in her body, and a stinging sensation that covers her skin, making it hard to breathe.
There's a whine in her throat before she gasps for oxygen, raising her wand in case the blow stopped her from hitting her target. Something is moving quickly in the wisps of smoke, and she draws her feet back, setting her jaw and clenching her teeth as she uses the structure behind her to push herself up.
It takes her a second to recognize him, just until the white-grey moves away from his face. Draco finds her in a second, blood on his cheek and neck, staining the hand that holds the wand he moves away from her. For a second, she wants to sag back down to the ground in relief, but it's there and gone before she can fully acknowledge it was there at all.
He scans to his left, and she swings her aim right-
Her inhale rattles, and hearing and sight dim down to just the sound of her heartbeat in her ears. She sags against the wall, her boots skidding forward, and she might have met the ground had Draco not grabbed her arm. He yanks her up and around, and she trips over wood before stumbling into his back. She grunts at the pain, but it doesn't hurt enough to overcome the words pounding in her mind. My wand, my wand, mywandmywandmywand. Her breath speeds up, fasterfaster, and hysteria edges in.
"My wand," she whispers as she sinks to her knees beside him.
Draco's hand covers her mouth, specks of dirt rolling between her face and the slide of his palm. He mutters a Disillusionment, and her nails bite into her skin. She closes her eyes for a moment, and the lids are heavier than she had noticed, heavy enough to have to force them open at the creak of wood.
Oh, God.
She stays perfectly still, evening out her breathing as the Death Eater's lighting spell sweeps the gazebo. She readies her wand, but it's useless. Snapped in half and completely useless. It doesn't matter if she has all the strength in the world, and knows every skill this war could require of her, and more spells than her enemy. Without a wand, she is already dead.
Her wand. This one. Useless, gone, broken.
She stares at the splintered tip as the Death Eater leaves and Draco moves away from her. She knows she should put it in her pocket, that it won't do anything for her, but she can't seem to loosen her fingers from around it.
She needs a wand. She'll think about it later. She just needs something that will work, even if the loss of her wand made her feel like her heart is trying to give up on itself. Yes, that's all. Missions, and plans of action, and backup routes. If it's broken, if it can't be fixed, you find another way.
The Death Eaters on the ground are gone, and if she attempts summoning a wand from one of them in the group patrolling past, there's no way to be sure it will work for her, and she might be bringing five of them down on Draco's head.
The Death Eaters seem to have a firm lock on the part of the lawn they had fought their way onto, and have formed groups; some make rounds to keep the grounds clear, and the rest work on expanding their stronghold. She had been separated from everyone in the dark and smoke, Harry disappearing with several Aurors, and Draco with Sam. When Hermione ran toward the sound of Toad's screaming, she had found Death Eaters instead. There's no telling where they are now, and she can't rely only on Draco until she finds a body on the ground and a wand that will work.
"Okay," Draco whispers, and it sounds dragged from his throat. "You have to go."
You? Not we? No- He pulls her up, brings her a step toward the door, and she automatically pulls the opposite way.
She can see that dawn is breaking open the edge of the sky, filtering light up into the once-black blanket, and slowly edging out the darkness of their shapes. There is less screaming and frenzy, but the fighting is still heavy. There's a bone-tired sensation sweeping across the sprawling lawns, but the need is still thick. It seems to intensify with the first sight of morning, as if they are all desperate to prove themselves the winner to the morning face of the sun.
His nails are jagged, like he ripped them with his teeth, and they make her skin burn; she thinks there must be blood, though she cannot see behind her and in the dark that's inside, but she imagines the color of it on the paleness of his skin.
"I'm going to count to eighteen, then you're going through the door."
"I am not going through-"
"You're going through the door, Grang-"
"I'm not going through it! I'm not going through the bloody door!" His fingers tighten, the muscles in his chest bunch against her back, and she can feel his sweat slide down her neck. "I'll scream! I swear to God, I'll scream-"
"Shut up! Shut up and go!" His panic matches her, but lower and heavier in his voice, and she must grab the door frame and push her feet against it to keep herself from getting thrown past it. She bites her lips hard enough to taste blood, trying to stop the scream at the pain that roars from the pressure.
He's trying to make her leave. Leave, like she cares how much pain she is in, or that she doesn't have her wand. Leave, like she can, with him alone.
There is a loud, painful thumping, like a marching army or her wild heartbeat, but probably both. Her tongue feels numb in its bed, and her arms and legs are burning with the force it's taking to keep herself from doing what he wants. The pain is almost intolerable, and she knows she wouldn't be able to handle it at all if she didn't know what letting go would mean.
"I am not a quitter! I am not a quitter, Draco Malfoy! This is mine! This. Is. Mine!" Her voice is clogged and too many words come out on the brink of a sob, and there is a heaviness in her chest like her heart is trying to relocate itself.
Does he know what he's demanding of her? What he's asking her to do? To let you die,, his words after the mission for Ron, angry in her mind, and she shakes her head violently.
"I fucking swear-" he gasps and growls in her ear, as if he's talking through a hole in his throat, and when he presses against her and yanks her arms, there is a tremble in his chest that lets her know he has had enough.
"No!" It is broken, these letters, and desperate. There is a struggle, brief, and she kicks and pushes, because if she leaves him alone...if she leaves him alone.
"I love you," he gasps against her ear, and her inhale is sharp through her teeth.
She is thrown out the door and out onto wet grass before she can even notice that she has stopped pushing back against him. Her boots slide, and she catches herself on air before she can topple. She turns her head over her shoulder. Turns wide, glossy eyes toward him, the tears spilling onto her cheeks, but she doesn't blink. She doesn't even breathe.
"Run, Granger, go!"
She is shaking, and the outside brings the screams louder, brings to color and scent the spells, and brings reality back to fearful bones. She eyes the smoke and shadows as something she has seen so many times, though never like this - no, neverlikethis.
Hermione spins, but doesn't feel the wind, and looks up at him in the doorway. At his sticky, bloody clothes, and his wild face, and his hair soaked with sweat. I love you. Had it been to shock her into stillness? Or is it because of this? Because he is injured just as badly as her, except he has a wand.
Because he'll be by himself in the middle of a Death Eater nest, and he doesn't know if he'll make it out?
But he said, he said it. He loves her. He loves. Her. Something inside of her is shaking, wrecking the flow of her blood. There's a deep burning in her chest cavity, and it doesn't feel like winning at all. It hurts. It's damn well tearing her apart.
"Come with me," she whispers so low that she does not think he hears her, but it does not matter - she knows that he has spent too long fighting against life to know how to stop.
His hair is slicked back with perspiration and his desire to fully see the world around him, and it a stark reminder of their youth. Of him, and Hogwarts, and when she had first encountered him with his hair like that. There are moments, huge lapses of time, that hang between that faded twelve year image and the one she sees so defined and hard in front of her. She feels time, heavy and cruel inside her chest, swelling up along her skin until she feels bruised by it. He was a horrible little boy, who became this man in front of her now. And while he stands there as a single speck among the hordes of war and loss, she sees him in sharp, bold lines against a backdrop of faint colors and other people's lives. Because while Draco Malfoy is nothing to the world, he...he is everything to her.
"I said, go. We don't have fucking time! Shit, fuck, damn it, Granger, run!"
A sob bubbles up, popping in her mouth. She does not want to leave him here, alone and injured, but he will not come, and what is she supposed to do? She has no wand, she'll be a liability, she can't help him, and she can't make him come with her.
"I-" She cuts herself off, shaking her head, and pushes her hand against her heart, that throbbing ache. "Me too."
His eyes are unwavering, but his expression does not change – pleading, angry, panicked, urgency. She presses harder to her chest and turns, staggering, and takes off for the woods before she risks both their lives. She runs with his image in her head, as if he is still in front of her, barely seeing the ground she rushes over. She is shaking and crying, and in no state to think, but she forces herself to anyway, because it's not time for a breakdown. It is time to figure this out and find a way to fix this.
She makes a break for a body on the ground, the glint of orange being her sole point of concentration, and she falls over herself when she reaches the fallen man. She digs in his pockets, searching for a Portkey, but can't find one.
She pries the wand from the his stiff hand, cold and the skin strange, her own shaking as she raises it. There are bodies on the ground in various states of broken, all captured in a moment they won't escape from, and she aims toward them. "Accio Saint Mungo's Portkey."
It is her left hand that she is forced to use, and it feels odd, but the sensation is lost under the cold wave that hits her insides at the feel of using someone else's wand. She is not sure if it will even work, but the thud against her arm tells her at least something has come.
She uses another spell to cut a patch off the man's shirt, but it sets the cloth on fire instead, and it takes her four tries to put it out. She's on the edge of her hysteria, of balling up and screaming herself hoarse just to release all the emotions, but she's stronger than that. She has a plan, a faulty wand, and she is brave. She is so brave, she is so strong, she is Hermione Granger.
She rips a piece of Harry's shirt off, and uses it to pull the coin out of the mud at the bottom of the puddle she is standing in. Her body is swaying back and forth, the world blurry at the edges of her sight, and her thoughts muddled. She pushes her arm against the deep wound across her ribs, curls her toes, and jerks her right shoulder. The pain flares as brightly as the fire consuming Draco's childhood home.
Too much, she thinks, gasping deeply to push the black web from her eyes, digging her fingers into the earth. She gives herself another second and lurches to her feet, running back the way she came. She tries to remember how long she has been gone, to remember the rounds they made, but it feels like hours too long that she has left Draco on his own.
She waits deep within the trees, just to the point where she can hear them. If she cannot see them, then they cannot see her, and she can't risk getting any closer than that. She doesn't hear any panic from them, or any spells cast nearby, so Draco must still be in the gazebo.
He isn't. She checks twice to make sure he is really not there still, and her heart thunders with fear until she is dizzy with it. On the third try, she finds three Death Eaters inside instead, and still no sight of the blond, and no place that he could have been hiding inside. It takes her three attempts to set the place on fire. The first sizzles out and the second backfires, fire roaring back as she dives away from it. It still burns her shoulder, neck, and hair, and her skin feels raging hot and stretched.
She doesn't dare touch her skin like some instinct demands of her, to cradle it and breathe through the feeling until it numbs. She jumps to her feet instead, her sight blurry, and feels the heat from the fire consuming the trees behind her. She wobbles on her feet, burnt skin in her nostrils, hanging in the back of her throat. Her third attempt hits the Death Eaters coming after her rather than the gazebo.
The burning men set a screaming path across the lawn, distracting the patrol, and she runs faster than she thought she could. Adrenaline, fear, panic, need – these things she clutches against her, because they keep her going. Because they pull out every bit of strength she didn't know she had.
She runs toward the loudest part of the lawn. Her survival instinct is screaming at her for the choice, reminding her of the unpredictable wand, but she can't stop. If... When she finds him, he'll be there. If he is anywhere, he'll be there. She has to save him – from the Death Eaters, from the war, from himself. The wand works for her a little over half the time, and she sticks to simple spells. She doesn't dare try any of the Curses, or anything with the power to kill her if it backfires.
Her chest is aching, her body soaring in pain, but she ignores her darker thoughts. She pushes them away with the force of a hurricane, she stomps on them until they are shards at the bottom of her hope. Please, please, please, she begs someone, herself, something.
The manor blazes in front of her. The fire is a beast against the sky, the house crumbling to smoldering debris. By the afternoon, there won't be anything but ash and Draco's memories. And soon they will find out who will be standing to watch the wind carry it across Wiltshire and into the Canal. She can't even concentrate on this, though, on the possibility of their success or failure, because all she can think about is not being too late. Is...
She finds him, though she looks over him at first before catching the glimpse of white locks under his hood in the weak light of dawn. She might be having a heart attack with the way it stops, flutters, and then pounds in uneven bursts. Her stomach flips, spins to knots, and she might vomit or cry any moment now. He's leaning against a tree, panting heavily, all his weight on his right foot as the other hovers above the ground. He's tying the Phoenix band around his head, but it's already soaking through with blood from whatever wound he's trying to cover. His hands have stopped moving under his hood, and when she looks down at his face, she realizes it is because he has spotted her.
"What the fuck did I tell you?" he mouths, eyes hard and angry, and she takes a steadying breath before speeding up her run toward him.
"Draco—"
"What are you doing, Granger? I told you to get out of here!"
"I found a wand."
He opens his mouth, shaking his head, his face pulled into a disbelieving look. "Have you seen what's going on here? Or are you completely fucking blind along with your stupidity? You're damn well impossible, Granger! Get back to the safe house and stay there!"
"The safe house is gone. And don't tell me what to do, Draco Malfoy, because-"
"Well, someone has to! Someone has to, because you obviously can't think for yourself!" he yells, and then looks up, eyes scanning over her head.
He grabs her arm, yanking her behind the tree, hopping to keep from falling over. "You're hurt."
"Everyone's hurt," he barks out.
"You need to come with me."
"I'm not going anywhere. You're going to-"
"Then I'm not going anywhere either!"
"Yes, you are." He nods, his eyes wide, and there's a hint of madness that would scare her if she hadn't seen it before, here, on other people's faces. "You're getting-"
"No. Not unless- You know what? You know what, Draco? You go on and on about my stupidity and my suicidal Gryffindor tendency toward self-sacrifice, but what are you doing? What the hell are you doing? You can't fight like this! You can't defend yourself or do anything! So you're going to suck it up, and you're going to-"
"Granger," he bites out, leaning to look around the tree before looking back at her. "Don't make me force you to leave. Because I will. I'll fucking drag you and Apparate you out myself, and then come back here once I've got you in a holding cell. Do you understand?"
"You're going to have to do that then, Draco, because I'm not leaving without you." She sniffs, raising her chin, and tries to dig for the Portkey discreetly.
Which is a feat, considering his close proximity. His hand is braced against the bark beside her head to keep himself upright, his body near enough to hers that she has to be careful not to touch him when she raises her hand to her pocket. He is being ridiculous about this, because it's suicide for him to continue on, and he must know this. She certainly does, and this is exactly why she's going to bring him out of here whether he likes it or not.
He's on his own, he's badly injured, and he won't see the full sunrise if he continues. There is not a single way she can live with herself if she lets him decide this moment, because she knows where it ends, and she will not go without him. She will not wake up in a bed or cell tomorrow and know he was dead because of this moment, because she failed to save him when he wouldn't save himself. And if they both were dead by tonight, then at least she knew she gave everything she had to this.
"I have orders, and-"
"Since when does Draco Malfoy listen to orders?"
"I have shit I have to do! And no one else is going to do them, because no one else knows to! Until I do it, I'm not going anywhere."
"And it's worth your life?" Her laugh is disbelief.
"Mine is not worth yours! Fuck! Fuck! I don't have time for this shit! Cross into the woods here, and keep walking North until you're past the barrier. I'll send someone for you."
"I'm—"
"I'll fucking drag you. I'll drag you by your frizzy little head, Hermione, and I mean it," he says in hisses and growls, and there's rage shaking under his voice.
"Draco?" she asks as he ducks his head around the tree again.
"What?"
"I'm sorry." His eyes don't even have the time to meet hers, but she can see the confusion begin to take over his expression before she speaks again. "Stupefy!"
He falls limp against her, his slick neck sliding against her cheek as she yanks the Portkey from her pocket and his wand from his hand, shoving the coin into his palm. She forces his fingers shut, squeezing for all her worth, and he's back to movement far earlier than he would have been had she had her own wand.
He pulls his head away from the tree, his face now in front of hers, and he is positively livid. She has not seen such rage in him for a very, very long time, and it sends fear to a passage of her throat to choke her. He tries to yank his hand from hers, and opens his fingers, but she is quick to follow his hand, her grip loosening but not falling away. She presses her palm to the Portkey before it rolls off his palm, keeping it trapped between their hands, while he smacks hard into her good shoulder and shoves the breath out of her lungs when she hits the tree.
Then they are gone, the world spinning and darkening, lighting up brightly just seconds later. Hermione has just enough time to suck in a new breath of air before it is gone again, hitting the floor on her back with Draco on top of her, the tree no longer there to support them.
He yanks his hand from her grip, the coin tinkering against the floor.
She raises her arm above her head when she realizes he is going for the hand with their two wands, and she cries out at the movement of her wrist, and screams when he grabs it. She wiggles and bucks against him, trying to get out, but he is hard, heavy, and completely unmoving.
"No!" she cries, smacking him in the face, shoving his forehead to push him away. He grabs it, grunting, and whacks it against the floor.
He grips her other arm again, stopping her from moving it away from him in a painful dance above their heads, and yanks it toward him as she screams again. He releases her wrist at her scream, but pulls his wand from her so hard and quick that it burns her palm. Voices yell out from somewhere around them, but she is too busy dealing with her pain and him to pay attention. She bites hard into her lip, the tears streaming down her cheeks as she forces herself to make her wrist work despite the pain, and shoves the tip of the wand into his chest. He broke the Stunning spell too easily before to consider it any sort of threat, not bothering to aim back at her.
"You are going to regret that."
"No, I'm not. And don't even think about Apparating out of here, Malfoy, because I'll be going right with you." She yanks on his shirt, clenched tightly in the fist of her hand. "We can play this game all night, if you want."
"Stupefy!"
Hermione squeezes her eyes shut, and it takes her several seconds to realize that it didn't sound like Draco's voice. She gives an experimental twitch of her fingers and opens her eyes, Draco's weight completely rested on her. She blinks at his ear, at his hair against her face, and then over him to the man in a white robe. The man - the Healer, she tells herself - levitates Draco out of the room and into another. She is levitated next, a woman looking worriedly at her as she guides her to a bed, ignoring Hermione's protests that she just needs a quick remedy before going back, because Harry, and Ron, and...
She turns her head once she's lying down, watching the Healer take Draco's wand from his frozen grip, before falling into unconsciousness.
Day: 1569; Hour: 12
She wakes up to a pain potion sloshing against her lips, raising bleary eyes to the woman in front of her and opening her mouth. She swallows hungrily, willing the ache to recede, and her eyes close despite her efforts.
Day: 1569; Hour: 19
No one is there when she opens her eyes. The room is lit with a faint glow, and she turns her head, finding herself in a private room. Her body is stiff and sore, and fear washes over her as her mind clouds with a hundred thoughts. Her throat is dry, a sourness at the back of her tongue from the potions. She mostly tastes and smells sterility, strong and unwelcome.
Her muscles don't want to work when she pushes herself up, and she has to hold her breath and push her lips together to hold back sound. She pauses once she's sitting up, breathing deeply through her nose, and looks over at the side table. There's no sign of the wand she had found, and just her own, hanging limply from a quarter way down the length.
She's careful with her legs and the pull on her back for two attempts, and then clenches her teeth and shoves past their insistence on not moving. There's a grunt, low in her throat, and she wobbles, but she's on her feet. Her toes are dark blue and purple, swollen, and it hurts to straighten her back in the walk to the window. She stands sideways against the wall, reaching out to move the curtain slowly, and sees nothing but darkness and half a moon.
It's night, then. A day has passed, and she's here and not dead or somewhere far worse. Either they have won the battle at the manor, or the Death Eaters have yet to seize the hospital. She likes to think it's the first, because if the other side won, the hospital would be where they lined up their injured and finished the enemies. They certainly wouldn't have stayed at the manor while the Light received full medical treatment. Right now there would be Healers under orders and the aim of wands.
Hermione looks over at the doorway, lightly touching her ribs.
She needs facts, right now. She needs names and answers. In her head, it's Draco frozen on a bed, Harry disappearing into the smoke, Ron... She shakes her head, wincing at the sharp pain in her neck. She can't stop the image from coming back, though. The jet of green, the way his hair flew up, how his body hit the ground and skidded through the grass with the force. It wasn't Ron – Draco promised, Harry said. It didn't stop how disturbing it was to watch her best friend die, even if it wasn't really him. Her heart had exploded like it was, and there had been a distant knowledge in her head. This is it. This is where I finally lose it. This is where I don't come back.
It was never him, Harry had said, and all that bitterness and anger. She didn't have time to process it then, in the middle of a battle, in their fight for survival and victory. But he could have only meant that one way. Hermione closes her eyes, pressing her hand over her eyes. Because everything makes more sense in hindsight. Because everything is crystal clear. When you're living it, it seems impossible, but looking back, you always wonder how you could have possibly missed it.
She had thought he was strange because of his captivity. The awkward way he acted, staying in his room, his paranoia, his distaste for getting too close. God, the anxiety potion he kept in stock. She remembers the stiff hugs, the clumsy way he moved, the- Oh, God, the traitor, the imprisonment, her memories erased. She must have found him out. He might have even been the one to leave her back in ribbons. He... It was never him. The moment with Molly, the hugs, the laughing, chess, and...all of it. All of it, and it wasn't even Ron.
She rubs harder at her eyes, at the wetness, and evens her breathing. She feels betrayed, which is so stupid because it was a Death Eater, and there was no trust, or loyalty, or love to betray at all. It wasn't Ron at all. It was never him, and they were so stupid. Every moment scattered in her memories gathers together, forming one raging lie and a glaring truth.
Anger then, swift and unyielding, at him, at the Death Eater who wore Ron's skin and turned their joy into something ugly. Anger at herself for not realizing it, for not somehow knowing, right away, that it wasn't Ron at all. For-
Noise erupts into her room, and Hermione jerks her head toward the door. She scans the room, contemplating and dismissing: the chair, bed, window, blanket, pillow. She moves toward the empty potion bottles in the rubbish, glancing at the counter she would break them open on, and then the cabinets that might have something sharper, easier, that allows distance. There is yelling, questions, beeps, and rushed words behind the Healer that walks in. Hermione stares, eyes wide, as a man goes running past her door, two Healers chasing or following after. The door swings shut to silence again, except the gentle tapping of the Healer's shoes, and her clipboard rubbing against her robes.
Hermione stops moving across the room, barely acknowledging the curiosity on the Healer's face. "I need names."
The woman blinks at her, glances back down at the clipboard, and her stretched smile disappears. "Believe me, you're not the only one. There is no list. We haven't finished identifying people."
"But if you've started, you must have some. And what about Ron Weasley?"
"I don't know that name."
"Draco Malfoy."
"Mal- I don't know that name either."
"He came in with me!" Hermione spreads her hands, like the answer must be obvious.
"I assure you, Miss Granger, a lot of people came in with you." The Healer looks fairly ragged now, exhaustion and annoyance pulling at her face.
"Fine. Harry Potter." Hermione gives her a look that very much dares her to tell her she doesn't know that one.
"I can't release patient-"
"I'm practically his-"
"-but if you put him on your list, I'll let him come in before he breaks another vase." Hermione gapes at the woman for a second, and the Healer tries to hide a smile behind her chart. "You can have three visitors. We have to limit the amount of people-"
"Harry, Draco Malfoy...Ron Weasley." Is he here? Did they find him? How did they know? Did- "Lupin, as well, in case you need my permission for that. I'm sure he's already here." As long as...
"Alright. I need you to relax so I can check you over. How are you feeling?"
Horrible, angry, confused, afraid, worried. "Fine."
Day: 1569; Hour: 20
Harry settles himself into the chair next to her bed, clad in hospital pajamas and his arm in a sling. There are a few bruises, and he holds his ribs when he sits, but he looks fine. Perfectly fine, perfectly alive, brushing off her worried questioning of his health to replace it with his own.
"I'm fine. Had some broken bones, burns, a couple wounds. I've had worse." Her fingers pick quickly at the little balls of thread on her blanket, trying to ease her impatience.
"I know. It doesn't..." He picks up the two halves of her wand from the bedside table, holding them up to her with a questioning look.
"When we got separated. Right before I got the Killing Curse out, he cast something at me. It threw me into the side of the gazebo. Broke my wand." And her other wrist too, unless it was from something else. The images have combined, lapping over one another, and it takes a lot of thinking to know what happened when and what happened at all.
"What did you do?"
Her mouth opens, words straining, remembering Draco filling up the doorway. I love you, like he was in pain to say it. Like it kicked him in the gut. She almost can't believe he said it, but there's nothing else that sounds enough like it that he might have said. There's nothing else that could cause that reaction in her body before her mind had even grasped it. She almost thought she had made it up. Had gone crazy with the war and imagined the things she wanted to hear, that she thought she never would, that she told herself was impossible so she could be prepared for when it was.
He loves her. Impossibly. Somehow...somehow he does.
He was going to kill her, she is sure of it. "I found another one. Harry, I need the list."
"There isn't one. I know... I know of Tonks. I found her."
Coldness, in her gut. She raises her hand to her eyes, rubbing at the wetness again, the bandages on her broken fingers scraping her cheek. Letters tumble up from her vocal chords, but they don't make sense. Tonks. God, she had really been hoping...she really hoped. Hoped so hard that hope could make a difference at all.
Harry takes a breath, his hand finding hers as she pushes her head back into the pillows, closing her eyes. The tears escape anyway, hot on her face, and a knot convulses in her throat.
"I don't know about anyone else. I know Ginny is fine. Molly, Arthur, George, Bill, Charlie. Lupin. Malfoy."
It's the first time she's ever gotten a list of who is alive instead of who is dead. Her body sags, wetness creeping out from her lashes, but there's one more name that could break her. "Ron?"
Harry's fingers squeeze harder, and her heart drops, her eyes opening to face it. "Ron... The person we found in Italy wasn't Ron. In fact, he made it quite clear that the only reason all of us weren't dead was because they decided not to kill us. They needed us to bring...fake Ron into the Order."
"It was all a lie."
"I know. But we have the real Ron. Malfoy and Lupin were on a mission, before the Death Eaters stormed Headquarters, and found him. I guess Malfoy remembered you saying something about him being at the Burrow, and it was...obvious he had been a prisoner for some time. They brought him to the Ministry, went into his head-"
"Wait, Harry... When we were questioned after the miss-"
"He must have been an Occlumens. It was probably part of the reason they chose him to do it. He might have been a Legilimens as well. Goes into my head, or Ron's, recreates the memories in his own. They must have beaten him up a bit when we were captured, because he had bruises. Or one of us did, in his real form or something." Harry rubs his palm into his forehead, over his scar, over the memory of people being in his mind. "We were idiots. We were so bloody happy that we found him, we buggered ourselves."
He's dead. He's dead, or she would find him, and she would... She doesn't know what she would do, but they are things she would regret later, if only because she had become the sort of person who could do them, and know the sort of anger that could make the decision for her.
"That's how they found out about the safe houses as well. The..." Hermione shakes her head. "How is Ron? Our Ron?"
He had been imprisoned that entire time. When she and Harry had been sitting idly by, trying to help a man, a Death Eater, an enemy that wasn't him. Some man they had protected, and laughed with, and grew more angry with Death Eaters when he would pull away from her touch. Mudblood, he had been thinking, and trying to keep up appearances, while their Ron was being tortured, or starved, or left alone in the dark.
Harry swallows, his eyes scanning the far wall. "He's...not all there, Hermione. His body will heal, but his mind...eventually. He doesn't really speak, and when he does, it doesn't make sense. He's off in his own world. He didn't even really recognize me. He just stared and started muttering about rocks. He doesn't like any light, it freaks him out. Sometimes he gets violent."
"So, he's... Are you saying..." Because she can't. She can't even ask.
"The Healers said it might not be permanent. The amount of torture, and the fact that he was kept in a cell for so long..." Harry looks at once like he might cry, scream, and break something. "He's in a different place, mentally. Something he created to survive. We have to slowly draw him out, show him he's safe, prove that we're real. They have methods we can use, and... It will work. It has to. We just have to try hard, and he'll be fine."
Hermione nods at the conviction in Harry's voice, but she feels like crying too. Like giving into the tears already on her cheeks and losing it. "I'll research-" She cuts off at the small grin that claims his mouth. "I'm sure if we develop the proper methods, trial run them, and find the most effective, we'll get him back to normal. It's just... It might take awhile. We have to remember to be patient, and-"
"It's going to take awhile for everyone. We have Ron – I made them triple check – and we're all alive. That's..."
"Enough."
"For now." Harry nods.
They sit in silence, too busy with their own thoughts and emotions to keep speaking.